Help! I interrupted a frozen Windows 7 update!

[sky_wire]

Originally Posted by Tiffani Jameson

It was actually the power supply gents! I'm just getting back in town, and able to thank you all for your valuable input.

While I consider myself knowledgeable about computers, I always know there are those that know waaay than me. Nothing makes me hornier than a smart man.

Kiss kiss!

Tip for the future: Before doing anything too fancy with your computer, like big updates or installing new software, create a "restore point" with control panel. It saved my butt more than once. The command is a tad hard to find, but worth the trouble. While I'm on my soap box, consider investing in an external hard drive and frequently make a complete "system image" of your entire computer.

Over the years, I've used third party (non-microsoft) software for making backups, and I've gotten burned badly. I backed up my computer religiously only to find that the software had some quirky incompatibility with my system (it didn’t support dynamic drives). The moral of this story is that before you commit to any computer backup scheme, run through the entire backup/restore process to make sure everything works. Wow! Did I learn this lesson the hard way.

Also, Microsoft makes a FREE application called Synctoy. It’s fabulous! It’s used to backup data folders, vs. software. It’s a great way to backup all the data in your directory c:users\username, which is where all your libraries are held. The great thing about Synctoy is that it only copies files that have been changed since the last backup, so it runs really fast. Since documents, vs pictures and videos, tend to be really small, the folder c:users\username\documents fits on a usb jump drive, and it runs super fast. It’s easy to run it a few times a week. As an added bonus, the files are not stored in some impossible to read, proprietary format. You can just open the usb drive and read it like a regular disk. Most third party applications don’t have this feature.

So, what I do is I make a system image about once a month, and I run Synctoy every few days. If my system disk dies, all I need to do is restore the system image to a new disk and then cut and paste my libraries over the restored image. Presto! Everything is back up and working. No more than a couple of days files lost. Oh yea, you'll need a system recovery disk; however, Windows system image reminds you about this every time.

Sorry for the long ramble. Woke up early, and I’m just killing time.

[Keyhole Arc Blow]

Originally Posted by Fast Gunn

Sorry to hear about your problems, Tiff.

I feel your pain.

Computers are delicate machines and it doesn't help to have mobs of hackers out there with nothing better to do than create new problems.

I say you need to take your laptop into a shop and let a pro fix it.

. . . You might also want to consider getting a Mac. I know I am!

Macs aren't immune to viruses, on the contrary Mac and iOS has been the easiest platform to hack for a few years now. The quickest hack was something like 10 seconds with just some simple social engineering through Safari.